1. Field of Use
The present invention relates to network management and, more particularly, to computer system management software which manages computer component operation and performance.
2. Prior Art
In recent years, attention has shifted from the connectivity and interoperability of heterogeneous networks to network management. That is, great attention is being given to keeping track of the devices on a network, checking on the network's performance and diagnosing and correcting problems. Since the late 1980's, the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) has become widely accepted as the protocol of choice for managing TCP/IP based systems. SNMP lets network managers monitor and control network devices and the systems that have SNMP agents, independent of the network topology or complexity.
Implicit in the SNMP model is a collection of network management stations and network elements. Network management stations execute management applications which monitor and control network elements. Network elements are devices such as hosts, terminal servers and the like which have management agents responsible for performing the network management functions requested by the network management stations. The SNMP model is used to communicate management information between the network management stations and the agents in the network elements.
Also, the SNMP model is designed to minimize the number and complexity of management functions realized by the management agent itself which provides the significant advantage of reducing development costs for management agent software necessary to support the protocol. SNMP models all management agent functions as alterations/changes or inspections of variables. Thus, a peer process which implements the SNMP model and supports SNMP application entities present on a logically remote host interacts with the particular management agent resident on the network element in order to retrieve (get) or alter (set) variables.
This mode of operation reduces the number of essential management functions realized by the management agent down to two functions, one function to assign a value to a specified configuration or other parameter and another function to retrieve such a value. The monitoring of network state at any significant level of detail is accomplished primarily by polling for particular information on the part of the monitoring center(s). A limited number of unsolicited messages (traps) are used to guide the timing and focus of such polling.
Management agents have been designed to monitor a greater number of diverse computer system devices having different communication requirements which vary from vendor to vendor. To maintain design flexibility in accommodating vendor requirements, one approach has been to provide an application program interface (API) at the SNMP agent level for implementing peer software or a software extension which communicates with an SNMP agent.
One such agent extension facility is described in a document published by The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. entitled SCO.RTM. TCP/IP SMUX Peer API Programmer's Guide" Document version: 1.0.0b. In this implementation, an SNMP Multiplexing protocol (SMUX) is used as the mechanism for communicating between an SNMP agent and one or more user daemon processes called SMUX peers. Each peer in turn communicates through a proprietary protocol to access information from multi-port serial board software.
While the above approach has provided increased flexibility at a specific level of operation, the peer software still remains operating system specific, thus reducing the ease of porting such software to work in conjunction with other network operating systems. Additionally, in order to extend the utilization of such software in managing other types of computer devices, it still is necessary to rewrite such peer software in order to provide support for such managed devices. Such programming effort can involve substantial resources and require a certain level of expertise to carry out.
Accordingly, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide a system and method characterized by an architecture which can be easily ported enabling such ported software to run on other operating systems and easily extended to operate in conjunction with new computer devices or instrumentalities.